SMWCon Fall 2013 retrospect

SMWCon Fall 2013 was surveyed by the organisers to allow attendees to provide feedback. This page aggregates the feedback provided by them. A document containing detailed individual feedback is available for organisers of future SMWCons. The organisers of themselves have additionally created a "Lessons learned" document available for future organisers of SMWCons.

1) What did you like the most about the conference?

1. Organisation
   • Well organised
   • Nice atmosphere
2. Contents
   • Wide area of topics
     • Applications / extensions / use cases talked about
3. Participation/Networking
   • Wide range/good mix of people
   • Experts speaking and attending
   • Great interaction among participants

2) How can we improve the conference next time?

1. Format
   • more speakers
     • more tutorials/demos
     • more lightning talks
   • allow for more impromptu sessions (birds of feather)
     • discussions about marketing
     • discussions about business use
     • discussions about programming issues
   • more time for single talks (20 min too rushed)
   • longer lunch breaks (1 ½ h)
   • more interaction between attendees (to be achieved by a mix of improvements: see points above)
2. Location
   • Solid bandwidth required
   • More signs and pointers to the right spot
   • tables rather than chairs, especially for tutorials
   • More space per person
   • Sufficient power supply

3) What group do you belong to?

• Academia - 11
• For-profit organization - 7
• Non-profit organization - 3
• Government or public organization - 5
• Student - 4

4) What best describes your job position?

• business owner - 1
• manager - 6
• developer/programmer - 10
• professor/researcher - 10
• student - 4
• other - consultant, employee

5) Where did you learn about the conference?

• poster - 0
• LinkedIn - 2
• mailing lists - 5
• huge banner on semantic-mediawiki.org - 13
• from friend - 7
• other - internet research about wiki systems, google, GSoC mentor

6) What topic interests you the most in the conference

• Business applications of semantic wikis - 12
• Scientific applications of semantic wikis - 8
• Technical talks - 15
• Current status talks - 12
• Other - roadmap

7) Which conference sessions were the most interesting for you?

• 1st day. Morning Session 2. Current status of SMW and new ideas - 9
• 1st day. Morning Session 3. Consulting business - 5
• 1st day. Afternoon Session 1. Science and SMW - 11
• 2nd day. Morning Session 1. Semantic Tools - 9
• 2nd day. Morning Session 2. Models and SMW - 11
• 2nd day. Afternoon Session 1. SMW in Public Sector - 7
• 2nd day. Afternoon Session 2. More SMW! - 4

8) What was your main motivation for coming to the conference?

• Networking: meeting with people interested in some topics - 15
• Listening to the news about SMW - 14
• Promoting my tool/project/idea - 3
• I’m new to SMW and I wanted to learn about it - 7
• Other - sharing experience/knowledge, tutorial/some talks

9) What do you think about the review process of the conference (if applicable)?

• I like it, let’s make it the same next time - 11
• It’s too demanding - 0
• It has to be more formal - 2
• We don’t need a review process - 2
• Other - call for talks with criteria

10) How do you contribute to Semantic MediaWiki (check all that is applicable)?

• I write the code of SMW or semantic extensions - 10
• I write or translate the documentation - 0
• I write scientific papers or media articles mentioning SMW - 11
• I answer questions on mailing lists and community portal - 2
• I promote SMW among my friends - 11
• I promote SMW among my students\colleagues - 14
• Other - offer SMW based services to customers

11) How do you use SMW?

• I use it for my business - 10
• I use it for my non-profit activities - 13
• I use it in learning process - 9
• I don’t use SMW - 1
• Other - research projects/personal knowledge management